The flanking party failed to find its way, and the attack in front was not pressed.[272] The American loss did not exceed fifty men. The British loss was reported as twenty-five. Sir George Prevost and his officers were greatly pleased by their success;[273] but Prevost did not attempt to molest Hampton, who fell back by slow marches to Chateaugay, where he waited to hear from the Government. The British generals at Montreal showed little energy in thus allowing Hampton to escape; and the timidity of their attitude before Hampton’s little army was the best proof of the incompetence alleged against Prevost by many of his contemporaries.
Hampton’s retreat was due more to the conduct of Armstrong than to the check at Spear’s or to the movements of Prevost. At the moment when he moved against Salaberry, October 25, a messenger arrived from Sackett’s Harbor, bringing instructions from the quartermaster-general for building huts for ten thousand men for winter quarters. These orders naturally roused Hampton’s suspicions that no serious movement against Montreal was intended.
“The papers sunk my hopes,” he wrote to Armstrong, November 1,[274] “and raised serious doubts of receiving that efficacious support that had been anticipated. I would have recalled the column, but it was in motion, and the darkness of the night rendered it impracticable.”
In a separate letter of the same date[275] which Hampton sent to Armstrong by Colonel King, assuming that the campaign was at an end, he carried out his declared purpose of resigning. “Events,” he said, “have had no tendency to change my opinion of the destiny intended for me, nor my determination to retire from a service where I can neither feel security nor expect honor. The campaign I consider substantially at an end.” The implication that Armstrong meant to sacrifice him was certainly disrespectful, and deserved punishment; but when Colonel King, bearing these letters, arrived in the neighborhood of Ogdensburg, he found that Armstrong had already done what Hampton reproached him for intending to do. He had retired to Albany, “suspecting ... that the campaign ... would terminate as it did.”
A week afterward, November 8, Hampton received a letter from Wilkinson, written from Ogdensburg, asking him to forward supplies and march his troops to some point of junction on the river below St. Regis.[276] Hampton replied from Chateaugay that he had no supplies to forward; and as, under such circumstances, his army could not throw itself on Wilkinson’s scanty means, he should fall back on Plattsburg, and attempt to act against the enemy on some other road to be indicated.[277] Wilkinson received the letter on his arrival at Cornwall, November 12, the day after his defeat at Chrystler’s farm; and with extraordinary energy moved the whole expedition the next day to French Mills, six or seven miles up the Salmon River, within the United States lines, where it went into winter quarters.
Armstrong and Wilkinson made common cause in throwing upon Hampton the blame of failure. Wilkinson at first ordered Hampton under arrest, but after reflection decided to throw the responsibility upon Armstrong.[278] The secretary declined to accept it, but consented after some delay to accept Hampton’s resignation when renewed in March, 1814. Wilkinson declared that Hampton’s conduct had blasted his dawning hopes and the honor of the army.[279] Armstrong sneered at Wilkinson for seizing the pretext for abandoning his campaign.[280] Both the generals believed that Armstrong had deliberately led them into an impossible undertaking, and deserted them, in order to shift the blame of failure from himself.[281] Hampton behaved with dignity, and allowed his opinion to be seen only in his contemptuous silence; nor did Armstrong publicly blame Hampton’s conduct until Hampton was dead. The only happy result of the campaign was to remove all the older generals—Wilkinson, Hampton, and Morgan Lewis—from active service.
The bloodless failure of an enterprise which might have ended in extreme disaster was not the whole cost of Armstrong’s and Wilkinson’s friendship and quarrels. In November nearly all the regular forces, both British and American, had been drawn toward the St. Lawrence. Even Harrison and his troops, who reached Buffalo October 24, were sent to Sackett’s Harbor, November 16, to protect the navy. Not a regiment of the United States army was to be seen between Sackett’s Harbor and Detroit. The village of Niagara and Fort George on the British side were held by a few hundred volunteers commanded by Brigadier-General McClure of the New York militia. As long as Wilkinson and Hampton threatened Montreal, Niagara was safe, and needed no further attention.
After November 13, when Wilkinson and Hampton withdrew from Canada, while the American army forgot its enemy in the bitterness of its own personal feuds, the British generals naturally thought of recovering their lost posts on the Niagara River. McClure, who occupied Fort George and the small town of Newark under its guns, saw his garrison constantly diminishing. Volunteers refused to serve longer on any conditions.[282] The War Department ordered no reinforcements, although ten or twelve thousand soldiers were lying idle at French Mills and Plattsburg. December 10 McClure had about sixty men of the Twenty-fourth infantry, and some forty volunteers, at Fort George, while the number of United States troops present for duty at Fort George, Fort Niagara, Niagara village, Black Rock, and Buffalo, to protect the people and the magazines, amounted to four companies, or three hundred and twenty-four men.
As early as October 4, Armstrong authorized McClure to warn the inhabitants of Newark that their town might suffer destruction in case the defence of Fort George should render such a measure proper.[283] No other orders were given, but Wilkinson repeatedly advised that Fort George should be evacuated,[284] and Armstrong did nothing to protect it, further than to issue a requisition from Albany, November 25, upon the Governor of New York for one thousand militia.[285]
The British, though not rapid in their movements, were not so slow as the Americans. Early in December Lieutenant-General Gordon Drummond came from Kingston to York, and from York to the head of the Lake where the British had maintained themselves since losing the Niagara posts in May. Meanwhile General Vincent had sent Colonel Murray with five hundred men to retake Fort George. McClure at Fort George, December 10, hearing that Murray had approached within ten miles, evacuated the post and crossed the river to Fort Niagara; but before doing so he burned the town of Newark and as much as he could of Queenston, turning the inhabitants, in extreme cold, into the open air. He alleged as his motive the wish to deprive the enemy of winter quarters;[286] yet he did not destroy the tents or military barracks,[287] and he acted without authority, for Armstrong Had authorized him to burn Newark only in case he meant to defend Fort George.